How Technology is Changing Academic Research

Maybe you’ve heard that technology is disrupting education. Even President Obama’s top economic advisor recently went on record saying that the rise of Web-based learning will lower the costs and barriers to a good education and raise living standards around the world. Pretty ambitious stuff, and lots of very smart people agree.

The digital revolution in education is full steam ahead, and it’s affecting more than just the classroom. Academic research is experiencing a high-tech makeover, as well, and it matters more than most of us know. For the average person, the scholarly pursuits of research faculty might seem harder to digest than storylines about free college, but when you realize that academic research impacts every aspect of our lives — including the economy, medicine and human behavior — then it’s much easier to swallow.

As is typical in every hype cycle, it’s hard to tell where we are in academia’s digital revolution. Some believe we’re just now experiencing a watershed moment, with the rise of online learning and MOOCs, in particular, signaling the arrival of a new age. Others rightly note that our climb to the digital mountaintop has been a gradual one. Regardless of your perspective, one thing is clear: technology has become the new backbone in the classroom and the lab.

On the research side, the movement to streamline the painstaking process of analysis began in the late 60s, when academics started using software like SPSS to do complex computations like linear regression instead of scribbling them out in longhand. Adding technology to the mix reduced the potential for human error and increased the speed of the research process.

Several decades later, cloud-based software started changing the way researchers collect data, as well. When we launched Qualtrics from my dad’s basement a decade ago, my dad was teaching MBAs at Brigham Young University and needed a software platform that was sophisticated enough for his research, but simple enough for his students to use.

We built Qualtrics because there wasn’t anything on the market at the time that fit the bill, and we soon saw that there was an enormous market in academia. From those humble academic roots, our tiny startup has grown to more than 5,000 organizations, including 1,300 universities worldwide, beginning with the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Our growth is a reflection of the increasing need for faster access to good data.

In the academic world, faculty understand this better than anyone because their careers hinge on publishing research in scholarly journals. Standing between every researcher and peer-reviewed publication, however, are mountains of messy logistics that must be removed to focus on what really matters: first-rate research design and analysis.

A prime example is Corinne Bendersky, an associate professor in UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, who recently published a study in the Academy of Management Journal. Her research, which challenges basic assumptions about the performance of extroverts and neurotics at work, was made easy by using technology to collect her research and experimental data.

In the past, polling a large organization for a study like this required printing thousands of surveys, buying stamped envelopes, and hoping that everyone receiving the questionnaire would complete it and mail it back. It would also require a major time investment from the organization being surveyed. Conducting experimental research would be even more complicated, requiring busy research aides to print and organize countless scenarios. Technology allowed Dr. Bendersky to avoid these costly hassles and give the business world a key insight on who to hire for high-performing teams.

Technology also removes the intimidation factor for students. As a student at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson, Su-Ting Yang used technology to collect data for the applied research required in her MBA program. For students like Yang, who have grown up around computers, it is much more intuitive to navigate a software interface than to design research on paper — and it’s more accurate, to boot. For Yang, the experience also prepared her for a career as a marketing research analyst at Nuance Communications where she uses the same techniques and technology every day.

Our world is being remade by technology at an increasing rate, and that’s exciting. Just as technology shrinks the world and democratizes information, it is also reshaping how we learn. This is important for a rising generation of students — and also for the researchers who drive the innovations that make life better.